Unprepared
by Loisarah
Summary: Giles' thoughts after the events of Welcome to the Hellmouth and The Harvest


Title: Unprepared Author: Loisarah  
  
Rating: PG  
  
Distribution: If you want it, ask. I'd be thrilled. Feedback: Be gentle, new to Buffy writing Loisarah@aol.com Spoilers: "Welcome to the Hellmouth", "The Harvest", the movie and/or the graphic novel "The Origin," slight ones for "The Dark Age" and "Checkpoint", maybe. Timeline: beginning of season 1 Warnings: None that I can think of. Slightly angsty Disclaimer: I don't own, not making any money, don't sue. (I've got $2 to my name right now anyway. Won't even cover your court costs.) Summary: Giles' thoughts after "Welcome to the Hellmouth"/ "The Harvest" Author's Notes: BIG Thank you to Dword. first she was nice enough to point me to lists in B/G-dom, and then nice enough to offer to beta anything I'd written, which I appreciate sooooo much. Do you know how hard it is for me to find a beta that, you know. RESPONDS? ::sigh::  
  
This is the first real fic I've written in years. it felt good. =) I did notes and everything for it. I hope you guys like it.  
  
I suppose this is what I get for watching WTTHM/TH one too many times. (or is there such a thing as too many times? )  
  
He switched sides again, still struggling to find a comfortable sleeping position. He stayed on his right side for a few minutes before rolling again onto his back to stare at the ceiling. And what a boring ceiling it was, no holes or tiles to count. Sighing, he got up out of the bed and walked down from the loft of his new flat.  
  
He was still getting used to the sleeping loft. It wasn't a very fancy place, but it was hardly a hovel, either. He was happy with it, which was good because he would be here longer than he thought possible, at first. He hadn't even bothered to look very closely at the pictures the realtor sent him of the place, he'd just signed where he needed to and returned the forms.  
  
A slayer. he was the new watcher to the active slayer. it still didn't seem real at times. until the harsh reality of being in such a different setting hit him. Sunnydale was very different from London, no mistake about that.  
  
And Buffy. Buffy was different. Different. the word seemed inadequate. Buffy was. Buffy. There is no way to define Buffy except to say that she is who she is, and that is hardly the picture perfect Slayer the council's teachings and mandates would lead one to expect. He had known she wasn't the typical slayer, if there was such a thing, but he hadn't been prepared for what he'd gotten, either. Buffy was. unique.  
  
"Into every generation, a Slayer is born. One girl, in all the world, a Chosen One. One born with the strength and skill to hunt the vampires." He'd had the speech memorized for years, since he began his training as a young boy. The words had always seemed so noble, so important. He could still hear her voice finishing the speech for him. "To stop the spread of their evil blah, blah I've heard it, okay?"  
  
In once sentence she'd destroyed the meaning behind the speech for him. Her dismissal of the speech made it seem pompous. hollow and frivolous. Noble words, no matter how well written, don't compare to the fearful reality of being the Slayer, he supposed. Words are small comfort to someone wondering at the unfairness of it or asking, 'why me? Why am I the chosen one?'  
  
"The slayer is an instrument. The slayer changes, the council remains the same. The slayer is our means to an end. Our weapon against evil." The words from a long ago lecture came to the front of his memory. An instrument? An easy word to make it acceptable to send a young girl into the night to fight for her life, and the lives of others who will never know her name, or her sacrifices. By using a few carefully chosen words, the slayer isn't human anymore, she's an instrument. The council's property to do with as they wish.  
  
What the council took years to ingrain into his beliefs, Buffy Summers dispelled in less than a day. The slayer was not just an instrument. Buffy was an innocent that fate, that destiny had played a cruel trick on. Like a 10 year old boy told that no matter what he wanted for himself, his future was destined to be something else entirely and he couldn't change that.  
  
Buffy is not just an instrument to be used until she is broken and dead, at which time the council can seek out a new one.  
  
Destiny. chosen. Both words that are hard to truly understand. unless they happen to apply to you. They both were chosen ones, he supposed. But you can't fight destiny. He'd learned that lesson the hard way. So would Buffy.  
  
Buffy may be a fighter, but if he could teach her anything, it was going to be that you can't fight destiny, and that the world needs her. She was already starting to understand that lesson, he supposed. Right after she learned of the body on campus, she had come to him. For all her talk of being retired and not wanting to slay, she wasn't able to walk away, as much as she may have wanted to. The way she went after Jesse and took the blame for his death proved that.  
  
The world needs a slayer, and he believed Buffy was the slayer the world needed. She wasn't a brainwashed young girl indoctrinated in the council's ways, doing only what the council desired, without question. Buffy fought to save people because it was the right thing to do, because she wanted to do the right thing. She literally was the light against the darkness, and that was the reason she'd already lasted longer than most slayers. Giles had never seen Merrick's journals, and he couldn't help but wonder if Merrick had seen this, too.  
  
He sat down at his desk and opened the cardboard box sitting on it. It was full of knick-knacks that he'd brought. but hadn't decided to unpack yet. He'd changed his mind. He reached in and picked up the first item, carefully unwrapping it and setting it on the desk for now.  
  
He continued unwrapping, glancing at the clock every few minutes. 11:59, 12:00. Buffy was on patrol. She should be checking in soon, he hoped.  
  
How quickly life changes. a few months ago he was a museum curator in one of the largest cities in the world, and now he was a high school librarian in America, with a secret he couldn't tell anyone about. He'd wondered why the council had chosen him, over all the other available watchers, but after meeting and working with Buffy, he knew. He thought back to his last conversation with Quentin Travers, when he'd been told he was going to Sunnydale. "Rupert, you have been prepared for this moment, to become the watcher to the active slayer. Do not disappoint us. We have the utmost faith in your abilities to train this slayer."  
  
Prepared him for that moment. Of course they had, he thought bitterly. He should have known.  
  
Ever since he'd come back to the council with his tail between his legs he'd been looked down upon. No matter how hard he worked, no matter how high he scored on their tests, it was never enough in the minds of the majority of the council. An unacceptable and reluctant slayer did not deserve a proper watcher, he supposed.  
  
When Buffy had been called, Merrick had just left and gone to find her. The council hadn't sent him; they hadn't sent anyone. No one expected her to be called, and since she'd never been trained properly, many hoped she'd just be killed and the next called. Ignore the problem and maybe it would go away.  
  
Merrick wouldn't stand by and let a girl be hunted and killed without letting her know who she was, without understanding what was happening to her. Without giving her a chance. The Powers had chosen her for a reason, he'd told Giles, before he'd left England to find her. At the very least she deserved to know how special she was.  
  
Special she is, he corrected himself. Buffy was special, and Merrick must have thought so, as well. He had died for her. He'd found her, trained her, and died for her. And she'd killed Lothos, a master vampire who'd been recorded as having killed more slayers than any other. She'd already done better than the council ever expected her to. Better than countless council trained and supported slayers had.  
  
"You think they train you for fighting the forces of darkness. but they don't. Oh, basic lessons the council is quite capable of teaching. mythology and research and basic spell casting. But what being on the front line of a nightly battle is like, what it's like to protect this world, to deal with a Slayer. Those are lessons the council does not teach you," Merrick had told him the last time they'd seen each other, the night he'd told Giles of his plan to find the new Slayer.  
  
Merrick had been looked upon as one of the council's best. he'd trained six Slayers himself, and when he'd died, many had blamed the undisciplined Slayer for his death. When Giles was assigned, it was probably because they hoped Buffy would get him killed too, or perhaps both of them would die. He certainly wasn't a replacement for Merrick. Two birds with one stone, possibly. He felt like a fool for believing that Travers and the others believed in him. No matter how hard he tried, he'd never be accepted. After over 20 years, it was about time he faced that fact.  
  
Another glance at the clock did little to ease his nerves. It was now a quarter past midnight and Buffy still hadn't checked in. A quick patrol, she'd said. Perhaps he should have gone with her. perhaps she wasn't ready to patrol on her own. it was hard to remember she'd been the Slayer for almost a year now.  
  
12:16 now. and still no ringing telephone. He tried to concentrate on the items on his desk. where he was going to put them. but he couldn't stop worrying about Buffy. and thinking about what she'd said in the library.  
  
"Prepare me for what? For getting kicked out of school? For losing all of my friends? For having to spend all of my time fighting for my life and never getting to tell anyone because I might endanger them? Go ahead, prepare me." He would never forget her words or how he felt at that moment. He'd never felt so useless or unprepared for anything in his life.  
  
Buffy was right, there was no way to prepare her to fight for her life. No preparation in the world makes it easier to fight for your life at the mouth of hell. The council was probably waiting, sitting comfortably in anticipation for news that Buffy had died and a more malleable slayer called. Putting the world at risk just because it would be easier to deal with a different slayer. Nothing like facing a sixteen year old girl and having her tell you how unprepared you are to make you realize how out of touch with the reality of the slayer the council is. Methods and mythology they may excel at, but the reality was another matter all together. If more watchers had met slayers, or even talked to watchers who'd trained an active slayer they probably wouldn't have so callous an opinion of the worth of the slayer. Or os inflated an opinon of the worth of their worth as watchers. The council is supposed to serve the slayer, not use her as an end to their own selfish means.  
  
He could also still hear her telling him that it was an understatement how unprepared she was. yet she was more prepared than he was.  
  
Destiny asks enough of the slayer, if Buffy wants a life, then he would try to make sure he allowed her to have as much of one as he could. She deserved that much, at least, Slayer Handbook be damned.  
  
At that thought he got up and walked over to the partially filled bookcase and pulled out the volume in question. the Watcher's Council Slayer Handbook. he flipped through it quickly, and shut it, just standing there, gripping it tightly. The next moment, he flung it across the room and into the wall. It hit and slid down to lay open on the floor, a few pages that had come loose scattered around.  
  
Buffy was not going to die. He was going to prove the council wrong. If it was the last thing he did, he was going to make sure Buffy lived longer than the council expected. She deserved someone who would take care of her, help her. He wondered if this was why the council usually didn't allow much contact between watchers who'd survived their slayers and watchers who were preparing to train a potential slayer. Best to not show them what it's really like, to spend time with someone so young and send them out to die.  
  
He walked over to the book still sprawled on the floor, and without thinking twice, he picked it up and threw it in the trash, where it belonged. No handbook in the world could help Buffy, he supposed. Certainly not this one.  
  
A slayer who's an instrument and fights because she is told is perhaps more dangerous than an undisciplined one, such as Buffy. An instrument doesn't have much to fight for. A slayer with family, friends. a life, she had something to fight for. The earth may be doomed, but Buffy was certainly someone who would die trying. Perhaps it's not as doomed as he thought. Maybe the hellmouth would claim Buffy. but he was certain there was no way she would go without a fight. Kicking and screaming, most likely.  
  
His reverie was interrupted by the phone ringing, finally. He almost ran to answer it, knowing it could only be one person.  
  
"Hello." he answered, waiting to hear her voice.  
  
"Giles. Did I wake you up?"  
  
"Buffy?" he asked, cursing himself for his stupidity, hand on forehead.  
  
"Yeah, Giles. how many young girls do you have calling you past midnight, hmmm?"  
  
"Buffy." he started, irritated already. God, this girl was good at getting a rise out of him.  
  
"Sorry, Giles. Done with patrol, quiet night. Only one vamp. Blowin' in the wind as we speak."  
  
"Good. Thank you for calling me. you'd best get some rest, this being a school night and all."  
  
"Okay. goodnight, Giles."  
  
"Goodnight, Buffy."  
  
He hung up the phone, letting out a huge sigh of relief. She was home, safe. That's all that mattered right now. He stood up and walked upstairs to the sleeping loft, knowing this time he'd be able to fall asleep.  
  
The End © 2003, Loisarah 


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